


The First Time All Over Again

by ChasingTheQuill



Category: Moonlight (2016)
Genre: Black Romance, Canon Queer Character of Color, Canon Queer Relationship, Falling In Love, Heartache, M/M, Memories, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 21:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10544690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChasingTheQuill/pseuds/ChasingTheQuill
Summary: A love letter Chiron carries around in his chest...





	

**Author's Note:**

> “I long for you; I who usually longs without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.”  
> ― Franz Kafka

 

I remember it like it was yesterday… you and me, barely eleven.  Skins gleaming, darkened by the sweltering summer sun.  That particular evening, you caught up to me on my walk home.  You ran up to me from behind, threw a carefree arm around me and told that new kid you were with, that I was your friend...  _best friend_ , you amended.  You looked proud like you were showing off some super dope latest thing nobody else had but you.  Your gaze darted back to mine, expectant. But see, I was busy soaring like a kite in the wind by then. I was still kicking high up in a cloud when I got home and found mama by the front door with a storm brewing on her face.  I kept the swirling gust going in my head, even after her voice took off as my feet hit the ground.

The next morning, I stepped out of the house and found you hovering out back by the clothes lines, a look of mischief plastered all over your face _.  ‘Me and some of the boys are goin down to the shack later.  Wanna come?’_   You knew what my answer would be, but you waited anyway.  ‘ _Yeah,’_  I said.  You nodded, turned to leave and turned back abruptly.   _‘So am I or not?’_ you asked, and I couldn’t tell right away if you were amused or angry.  ‘ _What?’_  I asked, watching you squint in the bright morning sun.   _‘Your best friend… am I or not.’_   You looked at me like you were puzzled as to why I was smiling.   _‘Yeah.’_  I replied.  You curled your lips into a lopsided smile and walked away without another word.  

A few hours later, down by the abandoned shack… the boys joked and teased, and I looked into you like I was meeting you for the first time all over again. 

 

~.~.~

The first and only time I ever held your hand… we were thirteen and drunk off some vodka you stole from your mama’s liquor cabinet.  We lay next to each other on my twin bed, sipped, giggled and hiccupped while the clear liquid burned its way down.  You passed the bottle from your mouth to mine, and I figured that actually meant our lips were indirectly touching.  My mama was not home that night to watch us stumble out the door after dark.  Our heads were swimming with booze and delight when you asked me to accompany you at least part of the way home.  You didn’t have to ask me twice.  

We did our best to keep to the sidewalk, but after you tripped for the third time, I grabbed your hand and held onto it tightly.  I expected you to brush my hand away.  Instead, you laced your fingers with mine and began talking about some girl in my class you were  _‘seriously into’… ‘You know, the one with the big tits’_ , you said.  I didn’t catch anything else you said about her, or even remembered who she was.  I was far too busy worrying that my palms were getting too sweaty.    

I can still feel the friction from your shoulder brushing up against mine and the heat from our fingers, hidden and intertwined in the night breeze.  When we got to the corner of your street, you leaned in a hair’s breadth from my face and asked if you could walk me half the way back to my house.  

 

~.~.~ 

Week two in juvie… locked in a seven-foot wide cell with Emilio, a jittery, fifteen-year-old kid from Texas.  He hadn’t said a single word to me, yet, he talked and kicked up a shitstorm in his sleep.   

I was barely there seven days before you wandered into my dreams and crawled into the lumpy bunk bed with me.  You climbed onto the threadbare blanket, curved your front to my back and pressed in like we were made of the same skin.  You kissed the nape of my neck and rubbed breath into my chest.   

 _‘I got off so hard that night thinkin of you, Black..’_ your words skipped and sank into me before I could find myself in my own skin.  I wanted to forget  _that night,_  even when I knew it was impossible.  It stayed fresh in my mind, lingered like a raw, painful need.  

 _‘Why the fuck you here now, Kev...?’_ was all I could think to ask you then… while you snuggled closer, rubbed your left hand between my thighs and laughed into my ears.  You dragged me from the confines of that dark room and threw me onto another pulsing wavelength… and we felt real, inseparable.   

We rolled, rose and fell like a bottomless tide.   _‘What do you want, Chiron?’_ Your answer was a question that sounded like a test, even as your hands readily peeled back my clothes, coaxing and teasing.  It was plain enough to see what state I was in, yet you pressed on.   _‘…Tell me what you want, Black.’_ The hairs on my neck stood on end.  Where did you expect me to start?  

I woke up with a start that night, arms wrapped around your shadow.  Emilio’s pained scream bounced off the walls, and the scent of your skin settled like a fog in my brain.  Nothing was left behind, except the reality of another looming daybreak within those four walls.  Nothing left behind, except the stretched-out hunger trapped within my bones.   

After that, you learned to come and go as you pleased. 

 

~.~.~

Year one after juvie... kids on the block knew better than to cross us.  His name was Malachi, the tougher-than-nails version of myself I aspired to be.  We built our own endurance, lined our pockets with cash and passed blunts back and forth any hour we pleased.

 _'First time I seen you Black, I knew there was somethin 'bout you, man..._ ' Malachi would say, blowing out smoke from his nose.  _'It's like… you here, but you really ain't, you know.  I dig that 'bout you, man.  A brotha's gotta keep his shit coded, you feel me... gotta keep 'em guessin.'_  He’d laugh in his throat and rub the back of my head.

Got really high one night and passed out on Malachi's couch.  Saw you in an overgrown field somewhere, crouching over Juan's bloodied body, pressing down on the hole in his chest.  I stood frozen in a voiceless scream when you turned your eyes to me and smiled, _‘...Hey Black’_ you said, wrists steeped in blood.  I jumped awake then, tears burning my eyes, stomach churning.

 Malachi pulled a blanket over his shoulders and slept on… I saw your eyes crisply, painfully aware that I might willingly walk back into that nightmare to look at you again.

 

~.~.~

All these years later… and your voice still has a way of taking up space… resonating freely in your wake.  Your now grown-up voice is easy and smooth.  It falls into me and settles on my skin like honey.  You sound calm and steady, as though we do this every other day.  Whether you know it or not, you make dull aches throb and give old wounds fresh, jagged edges.  Tonight, you speak of food and a haunting song, and I’m left wondering what this man looked like… the stranger who made you dial my number at this late hour.   

 _‘I’m sorry about all that’_ … you unpack layers of heartache with a handful of words.  I hear it in your voice then, the weight of loss.  All at once, I feel raw and exposed; brittle.  I feel like you see me, and I become acutely aware that I have been holding my breath all this time.  

You are painfully close one instant… an entire world away the next.  I try to picture you working in a kitchen – nodding to music, chopping vegetables, stirring a pot of soup, or dashing from table to stove in an apron – and I have a hard time imagining it.  I hear the smile in your voice though, and I guess it must be true.  Have thought countless times of how your face might’ve changed.  Do you still laugh as loud as you please?  Do you still take a joint down to the beach?  That girl you had in the stairway, did you break her heart?  Have there been many others?   What am I to do with that lingering tone I heard in your voice?  Why tonight, after all this time?

  

 _Caller-id shows the name and number of some diner I've never heard of before._  
_I read and re-read the details all the same; pulse racing._  
_The number is an easy one to memorize._  
_Thank god for the internet because less than a minute later,_  
_I am zooming in on a photo of an off-white building_  
_perched on the corner of a busy street._  
_So completely unassuming._

 _Yet, you are there now, while also reclining here…_  
_toying with me in the dark._

_Flat on my back in this bed, wide awake; wired._

_Clashing with the one choice I know I have left before me._  
_Chasing away sleep with a head full of whirling questions,_  
_memories,_  
_and this slow-burning anxiety..._

  
_...Readily pulling you in and out of focus._

 


End file.
